cloud hosting

In the age of cloud hosting, as it’s increasingly adopted by enterprises, chief information officers can struggle to maintain operational excellence. Here’s how to deliver consistency with OE as you adopt cloud.

Challenges of the Multiple-Vendor Cloud World

Knowing What You Mean by “Operational Excellence”

Partner with the Provider so You Can Achieve OE

Governance of the OE Plan

Protecting Your Partnerships

Choosing a Strong, Secure Cloud Hosting Partner

Challenges of the Multiple-Vendor Cloud World

In 2016, the business world is benefiting from an increasingly broad variety of cloud tools; and the extent to which they are being adopted continues to grow. For information chiefs in enterprises with sizable on-site app hosting infrastructures who are in the process of adopting cloud more aggressively, you are going to face some threats to the continuity of strong computing operations. In a multi-vendor hosting scenario (i.e., that of cloud), on-site ways to check systems, strategize for disaster recovery, process transactions, manage system modifications, and schedule tasks are a few examples of the many IT responsibilities that can become unexpectedly complicated. Leaders both in business and IT will often not think it’s necessary to pay as much attention to these elements in the expanding cloud climate. However, everything must be integrated in some manner, and with the multi-cloud or multi-vendor situation which is becoming so common, it’s challenging for the quality of operations of your IT services not to suffer.

It’s often difficult to tell if a technology is really taking hold, or if news of its trendiness is mostly industry chatter of businesses that are invested and trying to sell their biased perspective. Is cloud the future, or is it just hype?

What is Cloud Computing or Cloud Hosting?

How Fast is the Rise of Cloud, Especially IaaS?

Pros & Cons of Cloud

Strong Cloud Hosting for Your Business

When you search for “cloud computing” on Google, you get 74 million results. Compare that to “dedicated server,” which has only 569,000 results. That gives you a sense of the massiveness of this tech concept. Of course the cloud transcends the datacenter to be a major topic in consumer computing, such as iCloud storage, as well.

To what extent, though, does cloud go beyond being a trend? Is cloud hosting the future of business? Let’s look at what cloud computing is; forecasts on its growth; and pros and cons of this form of computing.

Small and medium businesses are increasingly adopting cloud, according to a recent survey. In fact, it is almost ubiquitous, with 95% of SMBs now using cloud or planning to use it. As businesses are increasingly using these services, the notion of cloud as a utility is going mainstream.

Business Cloud on the Rise: Survey

Cloud Hosting as a Utility

Business & On-Demand Cloud Hosting

Business Cloud on the Rise: Survey

Almost 19 out of every 20 SMBs currently use a cloud service or are in the planning stages of adopting one, according to a recent survey. Many companies are transitioning to cloud hosting because they are frustrated with their providers of traditional web hosting services.

The poll, from industry research outfit Clutch.co, looked at 300 companies with fewer than 1000 employees. Nearly three-quarters of respondents (72%) said that they have switched hosting web providers since 2011. Fully 86% of businesses said that they had problems with their web host within the last twelve months.

Public and private clouds both have their advantages. To benefit from both of their strengths, many enterprises are choosing a hybrid cloud.

Public and Private Cloud

Why are Some Companies Choosing Hybrid?

Optimizing Agility

Maintaining Compliance

Facilitating Partnerships

Leveraging Real-Time Decisions

Moving Forward with Cloud

Cloud is generally considered a solution that can help businesses control their expenses while giving them the agility to innovate and outmaneuver their competition. The question many organizations have is which type of cloud makes the most sense: public, private, or hybrid. Let’s look at general understandings of the public and private categories and why many enterprises are choosing the compromise of a hybrid.

Public and Private Cloud

Total expenditure on cloud infrastructure is projected at $38.2 billion this year by IDC. This technology is only continuing to grow, so businesses have options – it’s just a matter of deciding which route to take. It used to be that organizations would determine which one of those models made sense primarily based on their industry. Finance companies would generally choose private cloud, for instance. By keeping their cloud in-house, they were able to retain full control of security parameters and know where data was at all times for easier compliance with regulations.

As businesses tried to determine whether they should continue to keep their IT on-site or process it with third-party cloud hosts, many ended up choosing a compromise: hybrid cloud.

The Hybrid Cloud: What is it?

Why do Some Companies Choose Hybrid?

Hybrid Doesn’t Always Make Sense

Examples of Hybrid Cloud Use

Strong Hosting Partner for Your Hybrid Cloud

For the first few years that cloud was becoming prominent, it was praised by IT and finance professionals. However, those who were working with extremely sensitive or mission-critical systems remained reluctant about the technology. What enterprises started to do was strike a balance and adopt the hybrid model, rather than going all-in with either in-house or public systems.

The Hybrid Cloud: What is it?

A hybrid cloud mixes together public cloud hosting from an infrastructure-as-a-service vendor (a company that provides cloud servers) with a private cloud set up internally. In other words, the public and private cloud systems are distinct and established in separate locations, each with their own data centers and specifications. They interact through an encrypted connection which allows apps and information to flow between the two.

It’s critical to understand that hybrid is not one cloud with public and private aspects but two completely different clouds joined together, notes James Sanders of ZDNet. “This allows organizations to store protected or privileged data on a private cloud, while retaining the ability to leverage computational resources from the public cloud to run applications that rely on this data,” he says.

The Internet of thing is growing at a breathtaking pace. That means connectivity at both home and work will become more and more complex. As the IoT makes computing increasingly complicated, some say we should be concerned primarily with the backend rather than interoperability.

Speed of IoT Growth

A Jumble of Disconnected Cloud Services

The Issue of Interoperability

Changing the IoT Standardization Focus to the Backend

Cloud that Meets Rigorous Standards

Speed of IoT Growth

The Internet of things is expanding at a rapid rate as enterprises and vendors are becoming more aware of the possibilities presented by this all-inclusive approach to connectivity. The IoT market was forecast last year by IDC to grow at a whopping 16.9% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) between 2014 and 2020, rising from $655.8 billion to $1.7 trillion. To put that into perspective, it’s nearly as fast as the growth of public cloud, which is predicted by IDC to achieve a 19.4% CAGR between 2015 and 2019; and keep in mind that much of that public cloud growth will actually be because of the growth of IoT.

4 – Datacenter Cost of Ownership

Van Vugt says that Linux is free; the operating system itself is free. Nonetheless, you have to pay for the resources to run any program, of course. Plus, you typically will have to buy a high-end copy of Linux for the datacenter since free versions won’t necessarily meet your needs. That’s because free versions don’t have guarantees, essentially. In that sense, it should be understood that both Linux and Windows both come at a cost to business.

Typically, a business wants high reliability in their IT, high reliability that is also affordable. While the Linux OS won’t itself cost you anything, you’ll probably want a support package (or to go through a cloud hosting company). If you are deploying a server within your own datacenter, it often makes sense to get one from a firm that offers enterprise packages with support.

Linux is more affordable than Windows. That’s just a straight fact, because the Linux OS is free. Windows, on the other hand, charges a license for each user. It’s simply a different model.

Let’s Make Some Magic with the IoT (continued)

Cloud technology was designed for an Internet of Things world, argues Jamie Carter of TechRadar. The structural approach to computing makes it much easier to achieve interoperability between many different devices and systems, a feature that becomes increasingly complex but nonetheless fundamental as the IoT expands.

Cloud has been growing incredibly as businesses have shifted from entirely Windows environments to Mac and mobile, according to CSID chief innovation officer Adam Tyler. He adds that the technology will become even more prevalent as the Internet of Things continues to build.

The cloud and Internet of Things are often referenced in conjunction. The IoT is considered an application of cloud computing by many. While the Internet of Things does require the cloud to operate, its scope and power will have a major impact on how cloud computing develops.

Deep Connection between Cloud and IoT

Big Data of Things will Empower the Cloud

Let’s Make Some Mmagic with the IoT

Harnessing the Internet of Things with Cloud Servers

Deep Connection between Cloud and IoT

Every January, one of the biggest tech events in the country is held in Las Vegas: the Consumer Electronics Show. As expected for the 2016 event, there was an increasing amount of cloud discussion among companies and attendees. The majority of new electronic products, ranging from vehicles to kitchen appliances, are integrated with the cloud. Gradually the technology is becoming more ingrained throughout industry and, in turn, throughout our lives.

Managed hosting services are really a market that is booming right now, according to industry analysts. What is this option all about? Why are companies choosing it more frequently? Generally speaking, with public cloud, you are getting an environment that is significantly safer than what most organizations would be able to design on-premises – simply because of economies of scale.

Cloud infrastructure growth rapid, with managed hosting a major component

What is managed cloud hosting exactly?

Why, specifically, do businesses choose managed cloud?

Finally, did we mention that it’s safe?

Cloud infrastructure growth rapid, with managed hosting a major component

An August 2015 report by Research and Markets found that the market for infrastructure-as-a-service was set to hit $109 billion last year. It was projected to almost double by the end of the decade, reaching $206.9 billion. According to this analysis, each of the industry’s segments will contribute to the growth, with the largest source of revenue coming from the manufacturing and finance industries during that fast expansion. Many customers of cloud infrastructure companies will use managed hosting services, according to the forecast – which will result in a breathtaking compound annual growth rate for managed cloud of 16.2% through 2020.

As seen in those statistics, firms are turning to these hosting plans in greater numbers. They are able to use these plans to establish enterprise-grade computing systems that are based on operational rather than capital expenses. Like traditional legacy systems stationed on-premises at companies, this infrastructural option can be used to achieve all of the business’s digital needs, such as service delivery and collaboration, leveraging the speed and reliability of cloud.